This invention relates to a composite document processing apparatus, which prepares a composite document containing different types of information, such as texts, figures and images, with the aid of windows, viewports and icons.
Generally speaking, document editing devices that use a display unit are restricted by the size of a display buffer, so that the entire document may not be displayed at one time. To cope with this problem, therefore, a layout display has been employed, to show where in the document the data that is currently being entered or editing is being performed.
According to a conventional layout display technique, only the characters that partly constitute a document to be displayed are displayed, using special symbols, irrespective of the size of each character. This type of layout display technique simply provides a rough indication of the character layout for the entire document.
There is another conventional layout display technique, which can show the character layout using special symbols as per the first conventional layout display technique, and can also provide the layout of an image or a graph using solid lines in such a noncharacter region. Recently, composite document processing apparatuses have been provided with the ability to vary the dot pitch, line pitch and character size, and have become increasingly popular. Therefore, there is a growing demand for a layout display that allows an operator to confirm different pitches and different character sizes as well. Furthermore, development of a multi-window technique includes a number of images and graphs of various sizes in a document. In this respect, therefore, there is a further demand for a layout display that can handle multifarious images and graphs.